Each day I do a Tarot reading. The time of day varies--Sunday is really the only day I do a morning reading. Sometimes it's when I get home from work around 4:30 and I am sitting with a mug of tea. Other times it's after dinner at 7:30. Most usually it's just before I go to bed, and by that time it's late enough where I don't do a full reading and instead do a single-card draw.

For the last three months or so, the single card I regularly select is the Queen of Pentacles. I use Kris Waldherr's Goddess Tarot, and in that deck the Queen of Pentacles is depicted as a beautiful silk-draped Indian woman, regal and self-assured. (In Waldherr's deck the suit of Pentacles is associated with the goddess Lakshmi.)

We moved here to slow life down. It has been quite the adventure! Since 2009, I have had 7 jobs. That is more than Ihave ever thought I would have in my lifetime! My husband has had 2 since being here. I've started many projects and finished only a handful.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a particularly large rock for the last month you’re probably aware that the USA is in the process of setting itself on fire. Regardless of your political ideologies, chances are good that you feel pretty threatened these days due to the escalating violence that seems to be everywhere. We’ve gone beyond the point of “someone should do something about this.” We’ve officially reached “I need to do something about this.” It’s time for us to put on our big kid pants and actually do something about the state of the world.

In good times it’s usually enough to do subtle magicks to gently influence the state of the world, but we are not facing good times. In troubled times we need to do everything in our power to make a difference because no one else is going to do it for us. The most effective way to use your magick to actually affect the state of the world is to enhance your mundane actions. Unless you’re the Sorcerer Supreme (and maybe even if you are) magick alone is just not going to cut it. There is so much energy being thrown by all sides of the current political situation that the only way to cut through it is with mundane action enhanced by magickal action. We need to do both. Thankfully there are a lot of ways we can do this, particularly using pop culture magick.

Pop culture magick is particularly well suited for adding weight to our mundane actions. Characters like Captain America and Superman are already rooted both in popular consciousness and the American cultural identity. We don’t need to struggle in our magicks to find a sympathetic resonance with our goals of boosting truth, justice, and the “American way” because they’re already there. Our pop culture heroes are famous for making a difference in hard times, making them near perfect allies in these times. Further, because they are so rooted in our culture means that they already energetically touch just about everyone that we might want to affect with our magick, making hitting our targets that much easier. We don’t have to bring our pop culture magick to the mundane plain because it’s already there, ready to help us make a difference.

As with any situation, change has to start with you. For many of us the most difficult step in making a difference is the first one: getting off our couches and actually doing something. This is where you can do workings with characters like the Hulk, Princess Leia, or Mulan to use your anger and defensive emotions as a catalyst for taking action. Use the energies of righteous defenders like the Federation (Star Trek) or the Shadow Proclamation (Doctor Who) to motivate yourself into taking direct action like protesting and calling your local legislators. One of the most effective things you can do to actively change the way things are going is to phone your senators and representatives. You can boost the effectiveness of these communications by invoking righteous and persuasive characters like Superman, Captain America, and Aslan and letting their energies help you to make your voice heard. (If you have anxiety about calling your reps here’s a great article on making things easier on yourself) If you’re really uncomfortable calling your senators and representatives you can also email or write them a letter (though this tends not to be quite as effective as calling, it’s better than not making yourself heard at all). Use the courage, determination, and persuasiveness of your favorite pop culture icons to make your voice boom.

Another great way to boost your ability to make a difference is to enchant donations as you make them. Whether you’re sending firewood to Standing Rock, giving canned good to food banks, or providing hygiene products to local shelters, we all want to make charitable donations stretch as far as we can. We can do so by putting everlasting gobstopper charms on food donations, casting a bag of holding charm on clothing donations, or a Wisdom of Gandalf spell on book donations. You can enhance your volunteerism by invoking the strength of Fesik (Princess Bride) or the endurance of Strider (Lord of the Rings). Use your magick to heighten the impact of your mundane actions.

You can do even more if you’re comfortable casting spells on others (do this or not according to your own ethics). One options is casting clear seeing spells for the ignorant. There are a lot of frighteningly misinformed and mentally manipulated people out there that could use a dose of clear understanding of their situation. Call on characters like Hawkeye, Superman, or Wonder Woman to part the veil of ignorance and let people see the true nature of reality. Llasso of truth anyone or perhaps a Mythbusters spell? Another option is casting personal responsibility spells for the apathetic or inactive. Call on characters like Tony Stark or Buffy the Vampire Slayer to bring the full weight of personal responsibility on the indifferent. (See my July Boondock Saints spell against indifference) You can even take it so far as to cast guilt spells upon the perpetrators of injustice. Given the season, using the three ghosts of Christmas from The Christmas Carol seems terribly appropriate. The possibilities are endless.

It doesn’t matter what action you choose to take in these times, so long as you do choose to act. The current political situation in the US has seen an unprecedented rise in violence against anyone viewed as “other” and we are all “other” in some way. This is not the time to “wait and see,” it’s time to take a stand before things get even more out of hand. Inaction in times like these is effectively endorsing bigotry, hatred, and fascism. Be brave and make a difference.

It’s a super New Moon in Taurus, with Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, and Pluto all retrograde – what better time than now to work on breaking harmful habits and creating helpful ones?

In this post I will lay out for you four simple, effective techniques that have helped me completely change my life over the last five or six years, and I call them: Gross Yourself Out, Psych Yourself Up, Redirect the Flow, and Make It Special.